


'tis the season (every season)

by downn_in_flames



Series: all i want for christmas [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bakery, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Established Relationship, F/M, also it's pure unadulterated fluff enjoy that, this was supposed to be a christmas in july fic and i'm literally two months late
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-05 01:47:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20480894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/downn_in_flames/pseuds/downn_in_flames
Summary: Every day is Christmas when you're Lily Evans and James Potter.





	'tis the season (every season)

At twenty-five years of age, Lily Evans can best be described as fully ambivalent about Christmas.

She no longer holds the holiday with the same level of contempt as she did three and a half years ago, but it's not her favorite holiday either.

So, with all that taken into consideration, it's rather hard to believe that a random _July_ day would find Lily in a red-and-white striped apron, turning on a Spotify playlist full of Christmas music. Almost completely unfathomable, in fact.

However, that unfathomability fails to account for her boyfriend of three and a half years, whose love for the December holiday is entirely unparalleled by anyone Lily has ever met - including most small children. His holiday spirit is something of a contagion, one that even the most stubborn, unfestive person in the world can't fight off.

"We open in ten minutes, Lily!" James yells from another room, as if Lily hasn't been watching a clock since the moment they arrived in the little bakery four hours ago. "Oh my _god_," he repeats, this time more to himself than to her, "we open in ten minutes."

She walks into the front room, where James is standing behind the counter, seemingly frozen. His hands are braced against the edge of the countertop, squeezing so tightly that his knuckles are turning white, and the way that his hair is sticking up, even wilder than usual, suggests that he's just been frantically running his fingers through it - a trademark nervous habit of his.

She's been in that position all too many times over the past few months, experiencing a moment of panic as it hits her that _oh my god, they're really doing this_, so it's only natural that James was due for one of his own as well. Starting a business doesn't come without its share of risk, and the stakes are at an all-time high every single step of the way, so the past few months have been full of these little stressed-out moments. And James has been the one to calm her down all those times before, rubbing soothing circles into her back as he reassures her that everything's going to be fine and that she's doing great; it's about time that she repays the favor.

She wraps her arms around his middle, leaning into him. "It's going to be magical," she says reassuringly.

And she's not just saying that to placate him - after all these months of stress and heavy decisions, she _knows _that opening day at 'Tis the Season is going to be brilliant. She's watched their social media following blow up over the past few weeks, as word spread that a year-round Christmas-themed bakery was opening its doors in the heart of London.

Despite getting a business degree at uni that had nothing to do with photography or caption-writing, it seems that all those years of running the Instagram account at Just Desserts served as surprisingly effective training for creating a viable business social media presence.

"You're sure?" James says, the vulnerability in his voice palpable.

Lily looks around the bakery, at all the confections James has been working hard to create since the crack of dawn. There's a tray of croissants, golden and buttery, sitting on the top shelf of the display case, accompanied by a few fresh fruitcakes - a Christmas classic that Lily was sure even the most spirited of holiday lovers secretly hated until she tasted the version James had come up with, fluffy and sweet and not at all reminiscent of the dense brick-like versions of the confection that her grandmother used to make year after year.

On the shelf below that is every kind of cookie imaginable - gingerbread, sugar, double chocolate - all shaped like classic holiday icons and decorated to perfection. No two were made exactly alike; James took pride in giving each cookie a personality of its own, mixing up frosting in just about every color imaginable and piping thin details onto the desserts with the practiced grace of an artist in his element.

Lily's taste-tested just about everything in this bakery at least once - hell, she played a pretty integral role in the creation of most of them - and there's nothing in these display cases that she doesn't absolutely love.

Not to mention, the bakery is decorated to the nines. The custom neon light fixture just behind the display cases, proudly declaring ' 'Tis the Season, Every Season' (a gift from Lily just this past Christmas, not long after they'd signed the papers to officially purchase this little space) is the bow on top of it all, proudly proclaiming that _this _is their place, _this _is their Christmas wish come true.

She nods, even though he can't see her do it. "Even more magical than Christmas morning."

His grip on the counter loosens, and Lily can feel the muscles in his back and shoulders release just a little of their tension. "That's a pretty high standard to live up to."

"And yet, I have faith that it will."

As fun and magical as Christmas morning is - especially in the Potter household, which is where she's spent the last two Christmases - this is James seeing his dream come to life, seeing all the hard work and business meetings that he abhorred sitting through but Lily had forced him to attend anyways ("I may be making all the financial decisions, but we're _co-_owners and I'll be damned if I have to sit through a meeting with Ragnok alone") come to fruition.

You can't tie up a massive brick and mortar building with silver wrapping paper and a bow (although James had certainly wanted to try on more than one occasion), but Lily knows that having his life's goal come together in front of his eyes is going to be far better than anything he's ever found under a Christmas tree.

James lets go of the countertop fully, turning around in Lily's arms so that they're face-to-face. "I love you _so _much. Have I told you that lately?"

She smirks up at him as one of his hands comes up to rest on the side of her face, thumb gently skimming along her cheekbone. "Once or twice."

"Well it bears repeating," he replies, a smile slowly taking the place of the panicked expression that he was wearing just a few minutes ago. "I love you, and you're brilliant."

He leans down to kiss her, and even though it's just a brief little peck, it fills Lily with the sort of warmth that's only accomplished with James' affection or his homemade cinnamon buns. But as much as she'd like to stay here all day and bask in that feeling, they've got a bakery to open.

"I love you too," she tells him. "Now let's open a fucking bakery."

* * *

The first few hours bring a steady stream of customers, almost all of whom end up cooing over the red garland wrapped around the edges of the display case, or the cash register decorated to look like Santa's sleigh, or the floor designed to look like a fresh snowfall.

The cinnamon rolls are the first to sell out - the ones with the chai icing go first, and the eggnog-frosted ones quickly follow. Lily thanks her lucky stars that she'd managed to sneak one out of the display case before they opened this morning as her breakfast - James' chai icing is maybe one of her favorite confections in the whole bakery; the first time she'd tried it on top of a fresh-out-the-oven cinnamon roll, she'd practically been brought to tears by the deliciousness of the combination.

James spends most of the morning bouncing between the kitchen and the storefront - he's got a few more things baking in the back to prepare for the lunch rush, but he's never one to miss out on socialising with the customers either.

"A year-round Christmas bakery… where'd you come up with that one?" a woman asks him, looking into the cases of baked goods with interest.

"My girlfriend came up with it, actually," James answers.

"Oh, is she a big Christmas person? That's so sweet that you'd do this for her."

Lily hears James snort, and his eyes flash over to her for just a moment. "Not… exactly. More that she knows how much I love it and realised it'd be a bang-up business model as well. She's the mastermind behind this whole operation, really."

The woman looks over at Lily, who's trying her best to act like she's occupied with packing up goods for the couple waiting at the other end of the counter and _not _eavesdropping on their conversation.

"Beauty _and _brains, then," the customer tells James. "You'd better lock that one down soon."

James just laughs. "Oh, I intend to. Very soon."

That's not necessarily _news_ to Lily - they've discussed this on more than one occasion and decided to wait on getting married until _after _they'd gotten the bakery up and running - but it's still somewhat surprising to hear him say it out loud to a random customer.

But then again, he's always been the type to say whatever he can to make the customer happy, and that includes promises to propose to his girlfriend, apparently.

Although in fairness, they've done this whole thing backwards anyways - starting a business together is honestly almost a bigger commitment than a marriage, at least in Lily's mind. She's locked into this venture with James through multiple contracts they've had to sign along the way, meaning that they are, for all intents and purposes, pretty much stuck together at this point.

Not that she minds that much, though. This place may be James' dream come true, but it's also kind of become hers along the way too, over-the-top Christmas decor be damned.

"Good," the woman says to James. "I'll have three snowflake cookies and a peppermint brownie, please."

* * *

Marlene McKinnon, their sole employee for the time being, arrives just before noon, and it's pretty damn good timing, if Lily says so herself. The line is only _just _becoming slightly unmanageable, and an extra set of hands is basically a godsend at this point.

Lily had predicted a fair bit of traffic on opening day, but at this rate, they'll be fully sold out by 2 p.m. Which is far better than having excess stock at the end of the day, but still, it's not ideal. She'll probably need to massively recalibrate their supply orders if this keeps up.

"Lils, can you go back and take the bread out of the oven? And maybe start a new batch of cookies or two while you're at it? I think Marlene and I have got it handled out here for now."

"On it," she tells her boyfriend, giving him a mock-salute as she walks back into the kitchen.

She follows his directions first, sliding on a set of oven mitts and taking the loaf of nissua bread out of the oven. The heady cardamom scent of the Finnish sweet bread fills her nostrils - it's probably one of her favourites of the many types of bread James makes only just beat out by his sourdough.

She's certain that James had gotten a little antsy this morning, spending almost all of his time in the back while Lily had tended to customers - something evidenced by the fact that he asked Lily to come back and bake some more cookies rather than doing it himself. It's not as if he doesn't _trust _Lily's baking skills or anything - he'd worked with her at Just Desserts for long enough to have faith that she can, in fact, bake well - but he's still the better baker by far between the two of them.

But he's a social creature by design, so it seems fitting that he'd want to spend the afternoon out interacting with their new customers (and probably attempting to charm them into becoming regulars, because that's just what he does best).

She settles on baking a batch of ginger molasses cookies first. They're nowhere near as fancy as the gingerbread people James decorated this morning - much simpler and less Instagram-worthy, but they're Lily's favourites to make.

She goes about collecting the ingredients she'll need; most of the standard ingredients are conveniently stored next to the mixing station, but some of the more unique spices, including the crystallised ginger that's the piéce de resistance of this particular cookie varietal, are stored in their spice cabinet along the back wall.

So she opens the cabinet, rifling through for the things she knows she'll need - ground ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and, of course, crystallised ginger.

She's so devoted to this particular task - locating each of the spices in neat alphabetical order amongst the shelves - that she almost misses the small box tucked away amongst the spices. It catches her eye though, at the last possible minute as she's about to shut the cabinet door.

"That's not supposed to be there," she mutters, entirely to herself. She'd looked through these shelves just a few hours while helping with the early morning baking, and it definitely wasn't there then.

But she doesn't exactly have time to ponder these sorts of things, so she chalks it up to James messing with her organizational system and turns her attention back to baking. She'll ask him about it later.

This part, she can do automatically. From all her years working at Just Desserts to pay her way through uni, all the baking she and James got up to just for fun (because of _course _his favourite date ideas always involved a kitchen somehow), and all the experimenting they'd done to perfect the menu for 'Tis the Season, baking has become something as natural to her as breathing.

And with these cookies in particular, she's learned to trust her instincts over any predetermined recipe. It's something the Lily of three years ago would've never even entertained - breaking from a recipe in favour of eyeballing everything - but here she is, sprinkling cinnamon into the mixing bowl with nary a measuring spoon in sight.

She's hesitant to credit James entirely with her decreased rigidity over the years - she likes to think she would've learned to be a little more laidback even _without_ his constant easygoing, playful vibe slowly working its way into her personality - but it's certainly true that he's probably played at least some role in it. They've both been good for each other in that way - Lily keeps James grounded, he keeps her calm. They're each other's rocks.

She puts the bowl of ingredients under the hand mixer, flipping it on and watching the machine fold the flour, sugar, butter, molasses, and spices into one cohesive mixture. The sugary molasses-and-ginger scent of the newly-combined dough starts to reach her nostrils, and with it comes the vivid memory of her first attempt at these cookies.

She'd been with James, naturally, and it was long before 'Tis the Season had been even the tiniest inkling of an idea in either of their heads.

They'd been together for… maybe a year at that point, and she'd taken the X90 to visit him in Oxford. What she wasn't expecting to find when she got there, however, was her normally unruffled boyfriend on the edge of a dissertation-related nervous breakdown.

So she'd done the only thing she knew to bring James back down to earth: stuck him in the kitchen with no laptop, where he could stress-bake to his heart's content.

Which is precisely what he'd done, and they'd very quickly ended up with well over a hundred cookies taking over the small communal kitchen he'd shared with his three roommates. Of those many, many batches of cookies, only one of them was made by Lily: the ginger molasses ones.

She hadn't had any sort of recipe going in, just combined ingredients in what seemed like vaguely-logical ratios and hoped for the best; the downside of banning all technology from the kitchen for James' sake was that she hadn't had a recipe to follow like usual.

And yet, when they'd come out of the oven, and James had taken a bite, he'd sworn up and down that they were probably the best batch of cookies to come out of that day.

_The ginger has a talent for ginger cookies_, he'd joked, smiling for the first time since Lily had arrived. _If we ever open a bakery, these are definitely going on the menu._

It had been nothing but a joke back then, a comment casually thrown about, but now… well, now, they'd actually done it. They'd actually opened a bakery together, and these silly little ginger cookies she'd come up with out of nowhere were suddenly on the menu.

Lily's memories fully occupy her as she lines the cookies on the baking sheet, each little ball of dough rolled in a bit of sugar for that extra touch of sweetness.

Almost every item in this bakery has a memory just like that attached to it - a memory of her and James - but, she thinks to herself, the memory associated with these ginger cookies might just be one of her favourites.

* * *

Not having any extra inventory at the end of the day is something of a success - selling out in their first day of business is certainly something to be proud of, but it kind of puts a bit of a damper on their plans to serve leftovers at the grand opening party they've invited all their friends and family to.

"Well, it's a good thing I baked a separate cake, isn't it?" James comments, as they both walk into the back room, away from where everyone is currently mingling in the front of the shop.

"Yeah, at least we've got _something _to feed people with now," Lily replies, leaning against the counter as James opens up one of the industrial-size fridges. "Champagne is great and all, but throwing a bakery opening party without any baked goods would've been a _tragedy_."

"I really think Sirius would throw a full-blown tantrum," he jokes, emerging and holding the boxed-up cake, before launching into an incredibly accurate impression of his best friend. " 'I came to an opening party for a _bakery_ and didn't even get to _eat_ anything? This is a _travesty_.' "

"Well, I suppose we should get this cake out there to avoid such dramatics."

"Yeah, we should," James agrees, but he sets the cake on a nearby counter as he's talking, and turns back to the cabinets. "I just need to do one thing first."

He opens up the spice cabinet, which serves to remind Lily of the thing she'd been meaning to ask him about.

"Oh, James?"

He looks over at her, fingers still brushing along the bottles inside. "Hmm?"

"There's a random box sitting in the spices somewhere, I'm guessing it's yours?" She crosses over to where he's standing, with the intention of pointing it out to him, just in case he has no clue what she's referring to. "It's right…"

The place where she'd seen the little black box earlier is now vacated. "There," she finishes lamely. "I… how did it just disappear? You and I have been the only people back here today."

"Do you mean this?" James reaches into his pocket and pulls out the same box she'd seen earlier.

"Yes!" she replies. "I'd been meaning to ask you if you knew what the hell it was, but then we got busy again and I completely forgot about it, and - "

She doesn't get to finish that sentence, because James flicks the aforementioned random box open, and whatever comment was about to follow dies on her lips.

Because inside the box sits a diamond ring.

"We agreed to wait until we'd gotten the bakery up and running, and… well, the bakery's up and running," he says, and Lily looks back up at his face to see an expression that can really only be described as pure adoration.

She doesn't even have time to think - much less process what's happening - when James drops down onto one knee in front of her.

On one hand, she's naturally pretty surprised by this development, but on the other hand… immediately seizing the very first possible moment to propose honestly sounds exactly like something James would do.

"I've never exactly been a paragon of patience, have I?" he jokes, and suddenly Lily is trying to commit every aspect of this moment to memory, from the way the dimmed kitchen lights seem to be casting a glow on James' skin, to the way the hand holding the ring box is shaking ever-so-slightly, to the...

"You do realise you're proposing to me while wearing reindeer antlers, yeah?" she can't help but blurt out.

He reaches up to touch his head at that, almost as if confirming that yes, he does in fact have reindeer antlers on. One corner of his lip turns upwards in a half-smile. "Seems pretty fitting, don't you think?"

She can't help but giggle a little at that. Truly, given how consistently James donned a pair of reindeer antlers in the time between their first meeting and their first date (and every holiday season after that, really), it kind of _is_ only fitting that he'd be on one knee in a pair of reindeer antlers too.

"Yeah, I'd say it is," she replies, giving him the same sort of soft smile in return.

They stay like that for a heartbeat, neither of them saying anything, before James jolts a little. "Right, I'm supposed to make a speech now, aren't I? Lily, you're my best friend, my dream girl, and the most Christmassy non-Christmas person I've ever met. And I think it's already pretty damn clear that I want to spend the rest of my life with you, given that we've already opened a bakery together and I'm pretty sure that's a bigger step than marriage anyways, but I want you by my side forever, not only in this bakery but in every other part of our lives as well."

He gets a mischievous look in his eye, before belting out a, "_Make my wish come true, all I want for Christmas is to marry you_!"

The makeshift lyrics don't exactly fit within the flow of the song, and he's as off-key as ever, but the gesture still makes Lily smile even more broadly than before. "Well, that's one thing that hasn't changed from when we first met," she tells him. "You still can't sing."

He shrugs. "Yeah, yeah, I know that. But please don't leave a bloke hanging on one knee forever."

After all of the teasing, she finally gives him the answer he's been waiting for - the answer he _knew_ was coming, no matter how much he jokes that she's leaving him hanging. "Of course I'll marry you," she says, because there's not another answer she could possibly give, not a single other way that question could be answered - at least, not to her.

James lights up like Christmas morning has come for a _second _time today. He slides the ring onto her finger and, not even stopping to pay notice to his handiwork, stands up and brings his hands up to the sides of Lily's face, kissing her like she's the most wonderful gift he could've asked for.

She's almost content to just stay in this moment, letting the pure joy fill her up until she feels as though she might burst, but another thought hits her, and she pulls back to look at James.

"So does everyone out there know what's happening back here?" she asks, tilting her head in the direction of the door where, on the other side, all their family and friends are still gathered.

James shakes his head. "No, I didn't tell anyone. Well, except my parents and your mum... and your dad too, I suppose." When Lily gives him a questioning look, he continues. "I went to his grave a few weeks ago and had a nice long chat about how I was going to ask his daughter to marry me and while I wasn't there to ask his permission because I knew his daughter would kill me for succumbing to such a patriarchal tradition, I figured he deserved to be the first to know nonetheless."

Lily had successfully made it through his entire speech and proposal without crying, but the way he talks about her dad, and the way that he so clearly has come to love and respect a man he's never even met purely because of the way _Lily _loves him… it definitely makes her start to tear up.

"He really would've loved you," she chokes out, because even though she's told him this about a hundred times before, it's never been quite as true as it is in this moment.

"We would've had a hell of a time together, gradually getting you to love every single Christmas tradition there ever is or was," he replies, lightening the moment between the two of them in typical fashion that only he can manage.

"I don't doubt it for a moment," she replies, giving him one more kiss before grabbing onto one of his hands and giving it a squeeze. "Now come on, we've got a whole bunch of guests who are probably wondering why the hell it's taken us so long to get a damn cake out of the fridge."

"You think they'll accept getting engaged as an excuse for the delay?" James grins at her, but walks back over to where he'd set the cake on the counter.

"Everyone but Sirius," Lily answers, finally looking back down at the ring James had put on her finger a couple minutes ago, a ring that she'd almost completely forgotten about in favour of the man who gave it to her. "But he'll get over it."

With the cake back in his arms again, James brings it up to the front of the bakery, leaning against the door with his shoulder to push it open, and Lily follows suit.

In the front of the shop, everyone is still gathered and holding plastic flutes of ten-pound champagne, but instead of socialising amongst themselves like they had been when the two of them had disappeared into the back, they're all looking at Lily and James, as if they've been expecting the two of them to reappear for a while now.

"Speech!" a random voice demands - probably Peter, if Lily was putting money on it.

And if giving speeches on demand wasn't something James Potter was literally born for. "Well, it's been one hell of a big day for us," he says, grinning and addressing them all as if he'd rehearsed this a million times.

"We had an amazingly successful first day here at the bakery," he pauses and glances at Lily with a fully mischievous expression, almost as if to confirm that all hell is about to break loose, "and… we're engaged."

Sure enough, the entire bakery immediately bursts into chaos - a very different type of chaos than the lunch rush eight hours earlier but filling 'Tis the Season with energy nonetheless - and Lily thinks to herself that this random day in July is definitely going to go down in history as better than _any_ Christmas morning.

And that _does _mean something, because yeah, maybe she is a Christmas person after all.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on [tumblr!](http://downn-in-flames.tumblr.com/)


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